Next week's summit of Europe's big three powers is being viewed with a mixture of anticipation and foreboding as heralding a new form of leadership for the expanding EU. The reality may be less far-reaching.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair all have good reasons for needing the meeting in Berlin next Wednesday.
All three are domestically weakened, face awkward foreign policy challenges and want to get the EU moving again after a period of economic stagnation and political setbacks. They have recently joined forces in initiatives to boost European defense integration and persuade Iran to accept tougher inspections of its nuclear program.
There is no shortage of other pressing problems for them to address -- reviving a push for economic reform to boost Europe's limp growth, breaking the deadlock on a stalled EU constitution, healing transatlantic rifts over Iraq and seeking a successor to Romano Prodi at the head of the European Commission.
They are preparing a joint call for an acceleration of economic reform efforts ahead of next month's regular summit on economic policy, which officials say breaks little new ground.
But diplomats and analysts say the big three may not be able to agree among themselves on some of these issues, let alone deliver the agreement of other key partners.
NO "DIRECTOIRE"
Italy and Spain were quick to warn against any attempt to create an inner "directoire" to run Europe -- especially one that does not include them.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose country has just ended an unsuccessful six months in the EU presidency, said the emergence of such a leadership trio "is a worry for those who believe Europe is a mechanism for power-sharing, not a mechanism for the concentration of a hard core of power."
But some other countries welcome the new "trilateralism," at least as preferable to Franco-German hegemony.
"Of course, it's a novelty that Blair is joining the duo who meet often," Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller said in an interview. "It can only be beneficial. Blair's presence brings a new point of view. It brings the transatlantic option."
German EU policy expert Ulrike Guerot said the Berlin summit signalled a welcome recognition that the Franco-German axis was no longer powerful enough to drive an enlarged EU of 25 nations.
The traditional theory was that since Paris and Berlin often started on opposite sides of EU debates -- north versus south, agrarian versus industrial, protectionist versus free market, Europeanist versus Atlanticist -- when they reconciled their differences, others would follow. But officials in both capitals now intone the mantra that Franco-German agreement is "necessary, but not sufficient."
"It has become a locomotive without wagons," Guerot said. "France and Germany were seen as riding roughshod over the small countries, not respecting EU budget deficit rules themselves and trying to force acceding states to choose between Europe and the United States."
ENTER THE BRITISH
Enter the British -- free marketeering, pro-American, inter-governmental and presumed to have influence with countries such as Spain and Poland that resent Franco-German dominance.
"Clearly all three leaders are worried about how the EU can take decisions after enlargement," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London.
"Chirac and Schroeder know they can't drive a common foreign and security policy without Britain, and Blair thinks they've all got to overcome the old Europe/new Europe divide," he said.
Grant said Blair might be willing to help coax Poland and Spain towards accepting a deal on member states' voting rights that would unblock the stalled EU constitution after May.
The three might also be able to agree on ways to adapt the EU's budget deficit rules, which might in the long term make it less unattractive for Britain to join the euro, he argued.
But on Iraq and on some areas of European integration, like tax harmonization, farm subsidies or calls for a European public prosecutor, Blair differs strongly from the others. And mistrust between Blair and Chirac runs deep after two years of conflict.
"People shouldn't exaggerate what we three can achieve," a French official said. "But they should accept that we can meet in small groups, because Europe simply won't work if everything can only be discussed by all 25."
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS